Jesus' words about the dead burying their own dead may seem too harsh in the situation in which they were spoken. But on reflection, it is not hard to see that the situation itself was essentially critical, although the man whom Jesus called to follow Him apparently asked nothing extraordinary of Him. On the contrary, he was speaking of...
Jesus' words about the dead burying their own dead may seem too harsh in the situation in which they were spoken. But on reflection, it is not hard to see that the situation itself was essentially critical, although the man whom Jesus called to follow Him apparently asked nothing extraordinary of Him. On the contrary, he was speaking of what we would normally call a sacred duty: burying his own father. There is an interesting interpretation of this request. Some commentators believe that the father of the man mentioned in the account was not already dead, but was still alive and awaiting death, either because of illness or simply because of advanced age. The man was asking for a postponement so that his father could live out in peace the—probably few—years remaining to him on earth. He was ready to follow Jesus; he was only asking for a delay.
But Jesus did not grant him this delay. Why? One might say that postponements weaken a person, often depriving them of the resolve they had at a particular moment, a resolve that fades with time because they never did what they had decided to do. But this is only one side of the matter. The other is that, in spiritual life, there is generally no “later” at all. God is outside time, and one can meet Him only in the present, only here and now. Yet “here and now,” as the meeting point between a person and God, is projected into one entirely specific moment in time and one entirely specific point in space. Jesus marked out precisely this point for the man mentioned in the account. At that point, the utmost concentration is required on God's presence, on the revelation of His will, and on the task set before the person in the context of all this.
But the man of whom the evangelist speaks does not have this concentration. He is not in the eternal present where his meeting with God took place; he is in the temporal present, where the past gives way to the future and the present proves to be not a meeting point with God but merely the place where what does not yet exist meets what no longer exists. The Savior's sharp words are needed to tear the man out of the temporal present and set him before God in the eternal present. This, of course, is still no guarantee in itself, for a person is free. But a moment of the greatest clarity possible for a person always becomes their moment of truth: the truth toward which they must take a stand—for the sake of the Kingdom and salvation.
